Police ‘must stop more black people’

More people from ethnic minorities must be stopped and searched if Britain is to win the fight against violent inner-city gun and knife crime, one of the country’s top black police officers has said.

Keith Jarrett, president of the National Black Police Association, is expected to make a speech this week calling for an increase in stop-and-searches in black communities.

He told The Observer: “A lot of black people want to stop these killings, these knife crimes, and if it means their sons and daughters are going to be inconvenienced by being stopped by the police, so be it.”

The association, which represents thousands of officers from ethnic minorities, has previously questioned the high proportion of black people stopped and searched. The tactic was blamed for precipitating the race riots of the 1980s.

Man ‘killed by IRA’

The Provisional IRA has been accused of murdering Paul Quinn, 21, from Cullyhanna, South Armagh, who was found injured at Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, on Saturday and died soon after. Conor Murphy, the Sinn Fein MP, rejected claims by Mr Quinn’s family that the IRA were involved.

Aspirin ‘best for men’

The protective effects of aspirin on the heart and arteries are mainly experienced by men, research suggests. In a study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, doctors examined the results of 23 previously published clinical trials involving more than 113,000 patients.

Review on batons

Staff at young offender institutions could be allowed to use batons on children as young as 15 after the Ministry of Justice said it would review guidelines. Glyn Travis, of the Prison Officers’ Association, said that assaults on staff by children had risen “well in excess of 100 per cent” over the past three years.

Driving test fraud

The number of people paying fraudsters to take their driving test for them has almost trebled in three years. The Driving Standards Agency received 56 reports of “impersonation” cases in 2004. In 2005 the figure was 126, and last year it was 151. Andy Rice, of the agency, said: “There clearly is a risk to public safety.”

75m will live in UK by 2051

LONDON The population of Britain is likely to exceed 75 million by 2051, “almost entirely” because of immigration, an expert has said (Francis Elliott writes).

David Coleman, a professor of demography at the University of Oxford, told the House of Lords economic affairs committee that the proportion of “nonwhite” people in Britain was on course to grow from 9 per cent in 2001 to 29 per cent in 2051. He told peers: “The absent-minded commitment into which we have drifted, to house a further 15 million people, must be the biggest unintended consequence of government policy of almost any century.” He added that this increase was “by no means unavoidable”.

Parties clash over funding

WESTMINSTER Labour is being warned not to use public money to counter targeted funding of marginal seats by the Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft (Francis Elliott writes). Conservatives allege that Labour is considering a move to double the cash given to sitting MPs to spend on delivering political messages to constituents. Labour sources denied that it was planning to raise the £10,000 “communication allowance” to £20,000 but admitted that the issue was under consideration. David Cameron has threatened to pull the Tories out of talks on party funding if Gordon Brown does not accept a cap on trade union donations.

Two die on quad bikes

OLDSTEAD Two men died in separate off-road incidents involving quad bikes on Saturday. Colin Furness, 68, a farmer from Oldstead, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, was found lying in a field near his farm on Saturday night. Police said that it appeared that he had fallen off the vehicle and that his death was not being treated as suspicious.

A 32-year-old man, whose name has yet to be released, died after his quad bike hit trees on private land near the A177 at Thorpe Larches, near Stockton, Co Durham. Police said it appeared that the man had lost control on a bend.

Smarties to quit Britain

YORK Smarties is the latest famous British brand to switch production overseas. Nestlé Rowntree is to move manufacturing to Hamburg by the end of the year as part of a restructuring of its York operation, in which 645 jobs are expected to be lost.

Smarties will be the latest household-name brand to leave the plant, where they were first made in 1937. This year production of Black Magic went to the Czech Republic and Dairy Box to Spain.

The news comes after Cadbury announced that it would move production of some of its famous lines to Poland.

Briton abducted from oil rig

Armed rebels seized a Briton, a Croat, a Russian and four Nigerians from an oil platform, owned by Shell, off Nigeria. With crude prices reaching new highs, markets remain jittery over continuing abductions for the ransom of workers, amid a conflict about the distribution of oil revenue.

Woman pushed in front of train

A man, 39, has been charged with attempted murder after a woman, 24, was pushed in front of a train at Woolwich Arsenal station, in South London. She suffered a broken collar bone and facial injuries. The man will appear today before Westminster magistrates.

Survey opens can of worms

The electric can-opener is the worst household gadget, according to an online poll of 1,050 people by Comfy Quilts. The other inventions in the “worst five” were waffle irons, novelty alarm clocks, boiler systems and handheld vacuum cleaners.

Migrate with the whales online

An interactive website that enables viewers to track the migration of elephants, whales and polar bears has been set up. LoveEarth.com allows internet users to follow the animals featured in Earth, the BBC’s natural history film, to be released next month.

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